” U.S. efforts, primarily focused on training allies and proxies, are flawed, often ineffective, and can have destabilizing effects on countries that military operations are meant to strengthen, according to experts. Cast as benign training operations, they can lead to unforeseen consequences and dangerous blowback.”
“The practice of using questionable legal logic to justify military operations is not unique to the Trump administration. In fact, our last president engaged in similar maneuvers. Barack Obama rationalized his use of military force in several countries with reference to the 2001 AUMF, as well as to a second AUMF issued in 2002. The 2002 AUMF was granted to Bush by Congress specifically to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq. That license ended once that purpose was accomplished.”
Read more: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42469-mattis-tillerson-want-blank-check-to-make-illegal-war
“These are all, by definition, conspiracy theories – but they are also all things done by the other. Conspiracies happen over there. They are done by the bad guys. We don’t do them. ….except of course, when we do.”
Read more: https://off-guardian.org/2017/10/29/conspiracies-dont-happen-here/
“Post 9/11 authorization to use military force has been used to intervene in 19 countries. Congress ought to reclaim its authority to declare war, explains Col. Larry Wilkerson.”
“That planned modernization would increase the total costs of maintaining the current number of nuclear weapons and delivery system by 50 percent over normal operating costs, according to the CBO. The trillion-dollar question on everybody’s mind is: How exactly will the US government foot the bill for such a massive program?”
Read more: https://www.rt.com/usa/408607-nuclear-forces-modernization-trillions/
“From its inception in 1947 the CIA was specializing in the arts of assassination, regime change, and cover-up. As far back as 1953, the CIA published an assassination manual that the CIA succeeded in keeping secret from the American people for more than 40 years. It came to light in 1997 as a result of a Freedom of Information request. That was around the time that the Assassination Records Review Board, which was overseeing the mandatory release of JFK-related assassination records of the CIA and other federal agencies that had been kept secret from the American people since 1963.”
Read more: https://www.fff.org/2017/11/03/cunningness-cias-jfk-assassination-cover/
“The 2,800 papers included in the new document dump confirm some salacious details of America’s decades-long quest to kill or depose Fidel Castro — including a fairly shocking plan by the CIA to sow terror in Miami.”
“If you were surprised to learn the U.S. has nearly a thousand troops in Niger, you’re not alone. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who serves on the Armed Forces Committee, told NBC he ‘had no idea.’ Neither did Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat. Well, the surprises may keep coming.”
Read more: http://otherwords.org/u-s-soldier-died-niger-earth/
“Trump previously loosened CIA drone strike rules in Afghanistan that will now allow for some civilian casualties relative to the importance of the target. ‘We’ll be here as long as it takes until you change your mind,’ Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said recently in a message to the Taliban.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/22/trump-unleashes-cia-kill-teams-in-afghanistan/
“It originated in the early 1990s when the neocons in the George HW Bush administration realized that with the Cold War’s end, the Warfare State was in grave danger of massive demobilization like the US had done after every war until 1945. So among many other invented two-bit threats, the Iranian regime was demonized in order to keep the Imperial City in thrall to its purported national security threat and in support of the vast global armada of military forces, bases and occupations needed to contain it (including the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and US bases throughout the region).”